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Emergence of a pro-P2P lobby

With the threat of lawsuits being targeted at individuals via the RIAA, it's become rather clear that the community needs a voice to represent itself in what is becoming an increasingly one-sided power struggle over fair use. To that end, a number of P2P companies are coming together both in the United States and in Europe to form a pro-P2P lobby.

The initiative won't stop in Washington D.C., said Pablo Soto, a Madrid-based developer of file-sharing technology Blubster. European firms are forming a lobby group in Europe with plans to work with the U.S. group. "We are joining forces to make the U.S. Congress and the European Union listen to us and the hundreds of millions of voters who use our services," Soto told Reuters. Soto said details on the coalition will be released as soon as late July. He would not say if the group had hired a lobbyist, nor how many file-sharing firms were involved.

No one (serious) is wanting to argue that all music should be freely and legally downloadable via the 'net. However, the gross characterization of P2P users as "pirates" has caught on so well that the majority of the public believes that sharing files of any kind is synonymous with piracy, and no one even bothers to think for a second about whether or not some users are downloading songs that they already own on CD. The way the RIAA would have it, mix tapes never existed and no one ever recorded songs off the radio. No, all of this is new and evil, and the RIAA doesn't even have to produce demonstrable proof that they're losing a dime. A lobby group could, at least in theory, push the RIAA (and the MPAA for that matter) to drop its draconian tone, and give the public some real data.

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher